Obama’s Conservative Case for Sotomayor

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
May 26, 2009 – 1:11 pm

Today, in nominating Circuit Court judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, President Obama discussed a few qualities he seeks in a justice. The “first and foremost” — a rigorous intellect — is obvious. The third — “a common touch and sense of compassion” — has been a key messaging point for the last few weeks.

But the second I thought was interesting: “a recognition of the limits of the judicial role, an understanding that a judge’s job is to interpret, not make, law.”

How many times did we hear President Bush say the same thing over the course of eight years? It was a point included in almost every campaign speech (’02, ’04, and ’06). A signal of conservatism to conservative voters, but rooted in common-sense language that appealed to moderates.

President Obama has a knack for appropriating conservative rhetoric to advance his ends — from tax policy (tax cuts for 95% of working families) to closing Guantanamo (it will make us safer). Now, in anticipation of a conservative campaign to portray Judge Sotomayor as a liberal activist (I don’t know whether she is or not), the president has once again gone to the conservative well. Read More »

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The “People Side”

By Vinca LaFleur (WWW)
May 24, 2009 – 12:12 pm

One of the challenges speechwriters confront is capturing our clients’ voice — at an immediate level, meaning writing in a way that sounds like the client at hand, but also at a meta-level:  writing the way real people really talk, and about the things real people really care about.

In that regard, I was struck by this comment from Wal-Mart vice chairman Eduardo Castro-Wright in a New York Times interview this morning:

Q. What would you like business schools to teach more, or less?

A. I’ve done this quiz several times when we have gone to talk at business schools. I always ask people, “So who’s taking accounting?” And everybody raises their hand. And, “Who’s taking strategy?” And everybody raises their hand – and you go on with your typical curriculum about the business school. Mostly they are very good at teaching strategy, operations, management, finance, accounting.

But then I ask, “O.K., how many courses have you taken on how you talk with an employee you’re firing?” Or, “How do you talk with the person who comes to your office late at night to tell you that her daughter is sick and she might not be able to come in the following day?” Or, “What do you say when they come in with issues in their marriage that are impacting their job?”

As managers and leaders of people, those are the kinds of questions that one deals with probably 80 percent of the time. I think that business schools could do more to prepare kids to deal with the often more difficult side of business management and leadership. The balance of courses is probably weighted to the numeric side of business as opposed to the people side of business.

Whether we’re writing about public policy, or politics, or the private sector, it’s essential to keep the “people side” top of mind.

P.S. One of my favorite sources of inspiration for “keeping it real” is StoryCorps on National Public Radio, where you can hear brief excerpts of real people — often family members or close friends — interviewing one another for posterity.  The project’s tagline is “The conversation of a lifetime.” I usually catch the segments while driving to work on Friday mornings, and on more than one occasion have found myself weeping as a result.   And I ask myself, every time, how did these people — whose faces I can’t see, whom I’ve never met in my life — touch such powerful emotional chords in fewer than three minutes of dialogue?

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What Were They Thinking?

By Clark S. Judge (WHWG)
May 22, 2009 – 3:58 pm

I had a seat in the audience yesterday for former Vice President Richard Cheney’s speech on the threat to the United States of terrorism, on methods used to interrogate captured terrorists during the Bush years and on the Obama Administration’s release of documents detailing those methods.  It was at the American Enterprise Institute here in Washington.  Before Mr. Cheney spoke, AEI projected in the room the broadcast of President Obama’s speech on the same subject.  This morning’s reports generally scored the exchange as a win for Mr. Cheney.  That wasn’t the half of it.  After watching the back to back, nationally televised addresses, I thought, what were those guys at the White House thinking? Read More »

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GM Bondholders Lead PR Blitz

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
May 22, 2009 – 7:48 am

You may recall that President Obama recently referred to certain Chrysler creditors as “speculators” because they expected more for their investment in the troubled automaker than the 29 cents on the dollar the Administration was offering.

Most of those creditors have since given up their legitimate claims, rather than face continued tongue-lashings from the president.

But GM bondholders have learned from the Chrysler experience. Confronted with another raw deal by another bankrupt car company hiding behind the government’s skirts, they’re raising a stink about the real-life effects of abrogating contracts. Read More »

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The Message Is The Message

By Podium Pundits Editor
May 21, 2009 – 10:30 am

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post is by Philip Murphy, a corporate communications executive at a Fortune 100 company.

Good news for English majors. Richard Anderson, chief executive of Delta Air Lines, gave an interview for the New York Times’ Corner Office column recently and said what most of us have felt deep inside – the ability to communicate effectively is an increasingly rare and valuable skill in corporate America.

When asked what a company looks for in a new hire Anderson says, “You’re looking for a really good work ethic. Really good communication skills. More and more, the ability to speak well and write is important. You know, writing is not something that is taught as strongly as it should be in the educational curriculum.”

Anderson also makes an important distinction between communicating and putting a bullet point on a slide. “I think this communication point is getting more and more important,” says Anderson. “People really have to be able to handle the written and spoken word. And when I say written word, I don’t mean PowerPoints. I don’t think PowerPoints help people think as clearly as they should because you don’t have to put a complete thought in place. You can just put a phrase with a bullet in front of it. And it doesn’t have a subject, a verb and an object, so you aren’t expressing complete thoughts.”

Going a bit further, or course, is Edward Tufte, the Yale statistician and author of such beautiful books on visual communications as “Envisioning Information,” who blames the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia on NASA’s reliance on PowerPoint slides to convey vital data.

Much of what passes for communication in large American corporations these days is really more like a channel fetish than communication. Just because you’ve sent an e-mail memo or a taped video or created slide deck does not mean you’ve articulated a thought or shared something important. The medium is not always the message. Sometimes the message is the message.

So the basics of communication are still crucial. Once you master the basics you can go on to higher concepts such as brevity, candor, authenticity. At that point, the medium is just that – a means of delivering a message

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Al Gore’s “Bellyaching” Ad

By Mark W. Davis (WHWG)
May 20, 2009 – 10:42 am

As ads go, they don’t come any slicker than this.  An actor who looks like everyone’s country uncle looks up from his morning paper and coffee and says, “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of the Big Oil companies always bellyaching we can’t afford clean energy.”  He then goes on to hit Big Bad Oil for wanting “to keep on pollutin’ and keep on raising gas prices.”

The ad is the product of the Alliance for Climate Protection, headed by Al Gore.  It couldn’t be more deceitful.

Let me count the ways.

First, the ad draws on people’s anger at paying high gasoline prices for their cars and trucks and diverts that anger to the electrical power generation business, of which about 50% is generated by coal, and 20% generated by the nuclear power industry.  Natural gas, commonly seen as cleaner than other fossil fuels, accounts for about another 20%.  Big, nasty petroleum from Big Oil accounts for only 1.6%.

A stickler might add that with electric plug-in cars, we won’t need gasoline.  Fine, say that.  The Obama Administration’s recent agreement with the car companies on mileage standards guarantees we’ll move in that direction.  But to draw on the ire of farmers and ranchers hurt by high gasoline bills for their trucks and use it to hit the coal companies over the head is cynical.

Second, Big Oil is not bellyaching.  The oil executives I hear are tripping over themselves saying that we can afford clean energy, and they want to jump into that business.

Third, and worst of all, the ad sells you on the notion–which happens to be the position of the Alliance for Climate Protection–that we can move to 100% clean (meaning non-carbon emitting energy) in ten years.

Solar, geothermal, wind power are worthy projects that should be developed to their maximum practical extent. Yet solar currently produces a tenth-of-one percent of our nation’s energy.  Barring a Nobel Prize-winning discovery (for real science, not for a “Peace” prize), there is no way that these sources can remotely fill the bill for our expanding need for energy, and certainly not in ten years.

Even with heroic, exponential increases in output, these sources will be fractional. Important fractions, but not more.  Our real choices are 1) nuclear power,  and/or 2) develop some kind of new but likely expensive clean coal technology. With it, we will need as many solar, wind, geothermal and wave farms as science can produce.

But that wouldn’t make a good ad.

Final point, Mr. Country Uncle says that clean energy will get our economy back on its feet and more Americans back to work.   Now that’s really cynical.

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Politico: Meet Ben Rhodes

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
May 18, 2009 – 3:45 pm

Politico‘s speechwriter correspondent, Carol Lee, profiles one of the non-celebrity members of President Obama’s speechwriting staff, foreign policy wordsmith Ben Rhodes.

For those of us looking to pin blame for the president’s European and Latin American remarks on Mr. Rhodes, not so fast:

Some Republicans said the president’s Europe speeches showed he was there on an “apology tour.” And the GOP has made Obama’s foreign policy its top target, pointing to lines in his addresses as anti-American.

Parsing those more delicate turns of phrases, such as saying the United States “has shown arrogance,” is something the president handles, Rhodes said.

We also learn that Rhodes is a de facto policy advisor, has worked on a novel (The Oasis of Love — “about a megachurch in Houston, a dog track and a failed romance”), received a master’s in fiction writing from NYU, and spent several years working for Democratic foreign policy godfather Lee Hamilton.

And once again President Obama comes across as a thoughtful editor, sensitive to the sensitivities of writers.

Kudos to Ben, and good luck.

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Conservatives Aghast at Obama Laughs

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
May 18, 2009 – 3:15 pm

What’s with conservatives getting all bent out of shape over humor?

Last week, after Wanda Sykes told a few Rush Limbaugh jokes at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, several commentators on the right tut-tutted. “He needs a good waterboarding,” she said, and she claimed “I think he was the twentieth hijacker. But he was so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight.”

The Wall Street Journal‘s James Taranto intoned, “Our view is that Sykes’s joke clearly crossed the line into poor taste, unredeemed by either humor or insight,” adding, “In Obama’s wide grin as Sykes was telling her joke, we saw the smug look of a man who enjoys seeing his critics dehumanized. The president of the United States should be better than this.”

Today the Journal joke squad is at it again, this time with an op-ed by Glenn Harlan Reynolds. Mr. Reynolds takes exception to President Obama’s joke about auditing Arizona State University after they refused to give him an honorary degree:

“I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.”

Just a joke about the power of the presidency. Made by Jay Leno it might have been funny. But as told by Mr. Obama, the actual president of the United States, it’s hard to see the humor. 

Really? It’s hard to see the humor? I thought it was pretty darn funny. Read More »

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China’s Chutzpah

By Mark W. Davis (WHWG)
May 18, 2009 – 10:28 am

Last week, it leaked out that GM is looking to sell Chinese cars in America.  Today’s Washington Post headline pretty much sums up the dismal state of affairs, “As Detroit Crumbles, China Emerges as Auto Epicenter.”

The Post quoted a China-booster as saying, “When we look back 20 years from now, the year 2009 is likely to be viewed as the year in which the baton of leadership in the global auto industry passed from the United States to China.”

What no one said in the article is that a former Commerce Secretary of the United States government accused a leading Chinese company–and its partner, the government of China–of committing the wholesale theft of a GM/Daewoo car design.  The word in Washington is that this was done through computer hacking.  No sooner did GM/Daewoo open their doors in China than they found a rival car with the same exact specifications at a much cheaper price.

Free trade is one thing.  Letting the people who brazenly steal our technology sell it back to us is supine.  

Hello?  Democrats?  Republicans?  UAW?  Michigan senators?  John Dingell?  This is a ready-made issue.  Find the nearest camera and go for it.

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Tell It Like It Is

By Vinca LaFleur (WWW)
May 15, 2009 – 1:11 pm

Auto DealersStories of incredulity, anger, and dismay are rolling in from around the country as Chrysler dealers open up the UPS envelope that tells them whether or not they’ll still be part of the dealer family.

Without getting into the rightness or wrongness of the need to shrink the number of dealerships, I’ve been struck by the clumsy bedside manner of Chrysler’s leaders.

Here’s one quote, as reported by SpeedTV.com:

“It is with a deep sense of sadness that we must take steps to end some of our Sales and Service Dealer Agreements,” said Steven Landry, Chrysler’s executive vice president for North American Sales and Marketing, Global Service and Parts. “The decision, though difficult, was based on a data-driven matrix that assessed a number of key metrics.  In total, 789 dealers, which represents 14 percent of our sales volume, will be rejected and, subject to the court approval, they will discontinue selling Dodge, Chrysler or Jeep vehicles on or about June 9.”

With a deep sense of sadness?  Whatever happened to, “We feel terrible”?

The decision, though difficult, was based..?  How about, “We made this difficult and painful decision”…?

A data-driven matrix that assessed a number of key metrics?  I don’t even want to go there.

And 789 dealers will be rejected?  As if the automakers’ mess is their fault?  Why not say, “We desperately wish it didn’t have to be this way, but in order to save this company, we’re going to have to end our relationship with 789 of our loyal dealers.  We’re grateful for their service and deeply sorry for this outcome”…?

Memo to the CEO:  Hiding behind jargon and passive constructions just won’t cut it.  You’re putting a lot of people out of work.  It may be necessary, but it  really sucks — and you’ll get more sympathy and respect if you just say so.

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GM to Import Chinese Cars?

By Mark W. Davis (WHWG)
May 14, 2009 – 9:57 am

AP relates that  Chinese media is reporting that GM plans to begin exporting vehicles from China to the U.S. within two years, ramping up sales to more than 50,000 by 2014.  The lack of public and political preparation for this major move by GM is somewhat stunning . . . and somewhat in character for GM.

The UAW and Members of Congress predictably complain that U.S. taxpayers did not fork over mountains of cash in order to boost the Chinese automotive industry.  Two subsurface ironies are worth noting.

One, this points out the increasing irrelevance of defining companies as “foreign” or “American” on the basis of their names.  Toyota, Honda and Hyundai are robust employers of American workers making American-made cars, while GM is a robust producer of foreign cars by foreign workers for (until now at least) foreign consumers.

Second, should we buy a car from China?  While GM flags at home, it has scored a lot of successes abroad.  GM’s partnership with South Korea’s Daewoo has done well in many global markets.  Here is what former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans had to say about GM Daewoo’s treatment in China in 2005.

“One of the most flagrant and troubling examples involves the theft of a design for an entire automobile.  GM Daewoo manufactures a small, popular vehicle called the Spark. The Chery Automobile Company, [a state-owned enterprise] based in Wuhu, is currently selling a car it calls the QQ.  The Chery QQ is strikingly — if not suspiciously — similar to the Spark in every significant respect.

“After several professional organizations analyzed the two cars, they determined that the strong similarities between them were no idle coincidence.  The results of the QQ investigation and analysis showed that the two cars shared:

    * “Identical body structures.

    * “Identical exterior designs.

    * “Identical interior designs.

    * “Identical key components.

    * “And the investigation also showed that virtually all of the parts used to make each vehicle were interchangeable between the two cars.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the facts are clear:  This incident defies an innocent explanation.  The QQ and the Spark are twins because both cars are built from the same DNA — the proprietary mathematical data and formulas — that were stolen from GM Daewoo and used to build the QQ.

“This example is especially troubling because Chery Automobile is partially owned by the local government.  How can the rule of law take hold when those charged with enforcing the laws are either complicit in or tolerate illegal acts?  The key innovations contributed by Chinese companies shouldn’t be path-breaking achievements in the art of deception.”

The Republican presidents I worked for preached that free trade is a great prescription for all nations.  I am proud to have backed that proposition.  But when a nation practices intellectual theft on a breathtaking scale, it adds insult to injury to market their wares back to us.  If any U.S. car company attempts to sell Chinese cars in the U.S., the UAW should consider conducting a “consumer education” campaign about Chinese business ethics.

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Welcome Ashley!

By Vinca LaFleur (WWW)
May 11, 2009 – 6:23 pm

ashley-baia1One of the most powerful communication moments during the presidential campaign was when then-candidate Barack Obama, in his extraordinary speech on race relations, told the story of Ashley Baia, a young volunteer who had gotten involved in the Obama campaign because of her experience as a little girl, when she ate mustard and relish sandwiches for a year to help her family stay afloat as her uninsured mother fought cancer.

According to Obama, Ashley had shared her story at a roundtable with other volunteers and told them

“that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too. Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice. Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue.

And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

It was a perfect use of a real-life story to bring a message home.

One reporter at the time declared that Baia had officially become “a footnote in political history.”

And now it looks like Ashley will be getting a chance to contribute to history too:  She’s a member of the White House’s recently announced Office of Public Engagement, whose mission is to “create and coordinate opportunities for direct dialogue” between the administration and the public.

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The Troubling Case of Chrysler’s Creditors

By Ed Walsh (WHWG)
May 8, 2009 – 3:41 pm

Maybe Veridian Dynamics was right after all.

Last week President Obama verbally spanked Chrysler creditors who didn’t want to take the government’s offer of 29 cents for each dollar of debt they held. “Speculators,” the president called them, insisting that they were holding out for “an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.”

Despite the presidential tongue-lashing, the creditors initially held firm, petitioning the judge in the Chrysler bankruptcy to scuttle (or at least alter) the government’s plans for a speedy sale to Fiat and the UAW.

But today the last hold-outs gave in. And they made their reasoning plain:

“Being such a small group trying to fight the force of the government made [the funds] very uncomfortable,” said Thomas E. Lauria, a lawyer with White & Case LLP who was hired in early April to represent the creditors, who identified themselves as “non-TARP lenders.”

“In the end, they just concluded that the political cost to their institutions was too high to bear,” Mr. Lauria said.

That’s sobering. When investors start making sub-optimal business decisions because they’re afraid of the political fallout, and they don’t have faith that the judicial process can protect them, presidential rhetoric goes from dubious to dangerous.

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Job Opportunity

By Podium Pundits Editor
May 8, 2009 – 12:02 pm

The White House Writers Group is hiring. Here’s the write-up:

A small D.C. communications/PR firm, founded by Republicans, is looking for an entry level associate who is creative, a self starter and good at multi-tasking. A well qualified applicant will be able to handle reporting to multiple people within the firm and juggling several projects at once.

Applicant must be a skilled researcher who can use tools like Lexis-Nexis and be proficient with Excel and PowerPoint. A demonstrable knowledge of social media (especially Facebook, LinkedIn, and WordPress) is a big plus.

Responsibilities include research, list building, event planning, social media outreach and occasional administrative work. Salary is commensurate with experience. Position to start in June.

Please send resumes and cover letters to WHWGjobs@gmail.com

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History Rhymes

By Josh Gilder (WHWG)
May 8, 2009 – 8:35 am

panic-of-1873Mark Davis’ piece in U.S. News today suggests that the proper historical precedent for today’s crisis may not be the Great Depression of our parents’ and grandparents’ time, but the Long Depression that began with the Panic of 1873 and continued through the remainder of the 19th century.

It’s not a heartening comparison, as that time “saw the rise of explicit socialism and radical populism as mass movements in American politics” – what might be compared to a political pandemic virus that has never left our body politic and seems to be flaring up once again.

On the plus side, it was also a period of incredible technological and business invention. “During the Long Depression, we saw the first practical internal combustion engines, Rockefeller launching the oil age, and Edison inventing his light bulb and phonograph. The telephone went from curiosity to business utility. During these years, electrical and gas utilities lit cities and brought light and reading to the home. The technological evolution that would produce the automobile, the airplane, and the motion picture of the early 20th century were already well underway.”

Rich Karlgaard has pointed out in his Digital Rules blog that a lot of exciting things were happening even in the awful 1970s, when Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and Genentech first started up.

So there’s a lot of hope out there, if the socialist virus doesn’t get too virulent and wipe it out.

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